Windows builds use an old version of GCC

[vadimcn]

Rust wiki states that on Windows an old version of GCC must be used because of incompatibility with then-current LLVM. This causes problems for Windows users who run on a fresh mingw installation: #5878, #5712.

There had been several LLVM upgrades since then and apparently the incompatibility issue got fixed somewhere along the way: I was able to build Rust with GCC 4.7.2 on 64-bit Windows machine without apparent problems. Well, I had to copy old libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll and libstdc++-6.dll into stage0\bin to make stage1 compilation work, but other than that everything had worked fine.

[adrientetar]

I was able to build Rust with GCC 4.7 on Linux Mint 15 x86-64 for the record without having to do anything particular.

[klutzy]

#9205 blocks gcc 4.8 use, although it seems not critical. make succeeds, but make check-fast fails.
Tests expected to fail (as reported here):

• extern-pass-TwoU64s-ref
• extern-return-TwoU64s
• struct-return

Also recent mingw has some problems: 1 2

[klutzy]

It would be good if we know latest working gcc version.
We currently recommend 4.5. I've used 4.6 for several months and had no problem.
4.8 is known to fail tests. I have no experience of 4.7.
So: @vadimcn @adridu59 did you run make only? or did you also run make check-fast and it succeeded?

[klutzy]

yet another w32api issue (4.0.0-1) from irc: winbase.h has the following lines

#if (_WIN32_WINNT >= _WIN32_WINNT_WIN2K)
...
#if (NTDDK_VERSION >= NTDDI_WIN2KSP2)
#define FILE_FLAG_FIRST_PIPE_INSTANCE   524288
#endif
...
#endif

but NTDDK_VERSION is not defined elsewhere. gcc treats the comparison as false, so the constant is not defined.

My old w32api-3.17-2 contains:

#if (_WIN32_WINNT >= 0x0500)
#define FILE_FLAG_FIRST_PIPE_INSTANCE 524288
#endif

I guess NTDDK_VERSION is a typo of NTDDI_VERSION.

[klutzy]

@aarondandy documented detailed instruction for gcc 4.8 on wiki. Hooray!

[adrientetar]

@klutzy I ran make only.

[pnkfelix]

We might currently work with gcc 4.8. But we nonetheless must update our bots to test against the appropriate version of gcc on Windows. Accepted for P-high.

[zokier]

I just attempted to build rust on fresh install of MinGW with GCC 4.8.1. make check fails 8 tests:

[run-pass] run-pass/extern-pass-TwoU64s-ref.rs
[run-pass] run-pass/extern-pass-TwoU64s.rs
[run-pass] run-pass/extern-return-TwoU64s.rs
[run-pass] run-pass/glob-std.rs
[run-pass] run-pass/linkage-visibility.rs
[run-pass] run-pass/signal-exit-status.rs
[run-pass] run-pass/struct-return.rs
[run-pass] run-pass/tempfile.rs

Full log of failures as gist

[vadimcn]

That's expected. On Windows one should build the "check-fast" target, i.e. "make check-fast".

[klutzy]

@zokier @vadimcn I think make check should work anyway: #10452

[vadimcn]

Rust windows bots have transitioned to mingw-w64, so this is now fixed.